CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND!!

1. I suck at modern technology...
2. I hate Operations Research and everything related to it (including faculty)
3. I hate talking to most people...
4. I hate most Bollywood movies...
5. I have a big ego...
6. I have an attitude problem...(well you have a perception problem)
7. I am usually indifferent...
8. I hate social activities, parties, orkut but I still conform...
9. I hate animation... until Shrek changed my views
10. and finally... I think MBA is over-rated and am in it for the money and may be the "holistic experience" but definitely not for the knwledge!!

Liberal but not liberated!!

The trouble with me is that I crib too much…. When I was in college, I couldn’t wait to start working, then when I did start working, I couldn’t wait to go back to college, and now that I am in a B-school, I can’t wait to go back to work! I guess it’s a normal human psychology: the grass is always greener on the other side!
I come from a run-of-the-mill, middle class Bengali family; over- protected and a little spoilt in the early years, but then my parents were liberal enough to let me live my own life and make my own choices. So when I moved out of home as a teenager, wide-eyed and overawed by the fast and furious life in the fast lane in the city that never sleeps, I was full of new dreams and new promises: I was free, and yet, somehow it was harder to be free from myself- my ingrained middle-class inhibitions, my sense of right and wrong and my idea of “acceptable norms”. I continued to be chained by my narrow world, where everything was black and white; so even when I saw my peers live in the moment and enjoy their new found freedom, I still remained the shy kid with clearly defined boundaries and goals which I chose to call “FOCUS”! Then came a time, when I stepped out of my well guarded pupa, embarked on a journey of self-discovery, I was liberal, but not yet liberated- on one hand, I had the time of my life, and on the other, I was torn apart by the apparent inconsistency!
Today, as I look at myself as a bemused spectator, I have learnt to accept everything as a shade of gray, I have altogether renounced the idea of absolute right and wrong, I no longer have rigid principles but I am true to my values… but I still continue to be the little girl struggling to enjoy the freedom which is handed to her on a platter!

And we are back... unfortunately!!

Well, break ke baad aapki swagat hai… people have been cribbing that after 5 months of unkind criticism and ridicule, my Hindi was starting to become palatable but one week away at home has brought me back to square one!! Kids can be so cruel…

Diwali came and went before we could say Jack Robinson, and that in that one week I tried to cram in all sorts of pleasurable activities that we don’t get to do in college: sleeping, watching TV, meeting nice people (friends and relatives) and eating good food. Add to it the usual paraphernalia of the Celebration Season and India-Pakistan matches, you have the perfect recipe of FUN! Wondering if we can add a new core subject called Fun(d) Management in our course… we already have some 20 odd subjects in the second semester, one more won’t make much of a difference! Talking about second semester, well, the less said the better! We have already had a quiz within 24 hours of our arrival, and that too at 7 am. And it only promises to get worse…

I never could understand Physics in school. But now I think I got what that old man was trying to say when he made such a hue and cry about “Theory of Relativity”- the exam week seemed to drag on and on as we counted each minute of the agony, but the vacation week just flew past us.

At least now I appreciate Einstein’s statement: “Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”

First Impressions!!

I have survived (just about) the first sememster in a b-school... with 3 more to go, it doesn't seem to be a bright prospect! i thought that first sem was all about taking baby steps into reality, coming out of our cocoon and leave your half-baked, naive ideas behind and get into the mode of "structured thinking" as they call it! well it was sooo much more than that! From Kotler to OSHE, we have been exposed to a plethora of gyaan! We have been charmed by Prantosh and lured into the world of core concepts, STP and the famous 4 Ps of marketing; technologically challenged people like me struggled to make sense of ERP, data analysis, excel vba and flash (when you think about it, computers can be a real pain in life!); thrived in the agony and ecstasy of WAC assignments; been driven crazy by OB theories and made a mess of Maslow, Herzberg, Freud and the rest of the psycopathic gang; scratched our heads trying to find out why the balance sheets never tally; suffered from post OR depression and given up royally- LPP, Inventory Theory and Regression: u must be kidding me; were united in collective desperation in trying to figure out the mystery behind statistics; pfaffed our way through HR; spent hours over group projects, ice creams and last minute innovations; and covered for each other in non-acads! the past three months have changed us in many ways: for the people who were staying way from home for the first time, it meant a watershed moment in their lives. For seasoned hostelites like me used to bad food, inane curfews, and frustrated wardens, it was a taste of familiarity and reliving those stolen moments of midnite b'day bashes, watching FRIENDS late at nite, gossipping in the early hours of morning, getting late for lectures, fighting for the bathroom and sharing each others' deepest , darkest and silliest secrets. B-school education is often hyped for its holistic appeal, about its breadth but I never imagined that it would make such a sweeping transformation in our lives in such a short span of time, as we slept through the guest lectures and romped home with plumb offers during the placement week. Now after 4 months of herculean struggle, we have managed to survive the first semester and as we rush home to celebrate Diwali with our respective families, we also prepare ourselves for the 2nd sem- allegedly the toughest in the B-school life cycle!
So long... let's take a short break from the Symbiosis family!!!